As another testament as to how poorly a company can be run and still make gobs and gobs of money, the client that I am currently working on has hired my company to provide me…for who knows how much money an hour to work on report development. While overall I would say that they made an excellent decision in bringing me in to do their tedious reporting work, but then some new facts came to light that just make me want to cry a little bit. Apparently, the hardware that the reporting server is supposed to be running on isn’t even purchased yet. Not only were we told that I would be developing reports while I was here, but I was also told that IBM in all their power/might/glory (you pick the adjective) would be handling the metadata layer, so all I would need to do is come in, bang out a few reports and be on my merry way in a whopping 6 weeks. I actually thought that it was going to be too much time. Now, as it turns out, I may have a role on the testing team, the script writing team, a little side project management and oh….a little report development if that ever gets going. My 6 week venture to Charlotte was just adjusted to who knows how long, but I have a feeling that I’m going to be driving up here until at least the end of October (that’s another 3 months).
I figure that if I have my car running up there every week, that should net me somewhere around $2k when it’s all said and done, and that’s being generous. Perhaps someone will come along that will want to purchase my car, but who knows. At this point it’s doubtful. I have a feeling that if I’m going to sell my car, I may just have to bite the bullet and fix the leaking seal and take care of some of the other little issues that have been plaguing the vehicle. That’s enough about that…the car gets me up here and does so with decent fuel economy (I have been getting around 22-23mpg) and extreme comfort.
This weekend, Scott and Liz are going to be coming down, so that’s got me pretty excited. They get in on Thursday morning, so I won’t be there when they arrive, but that’s okay. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back down to Atlanta around 4-5pm and be ready to head out to Melton’s App and Tap or perhaps some other local Decatur haunt.
This past weekend, Melissa and I made amazing strides in getting out house up to snuff. The one thing that we’ve been missing for the past 2 months is floor coverings, and, me being me, failed to realize how much better they make a house. Currently we have hardwood floors throughout the entire house, and we had a single rug….it wasn’t good. Last night we went over to Big Lots and got an awesome 6’ x 10’ rug that goes perfectly in the living room, thus moving the rug that was in there into the office. All the changes have really helped to make the house feel more like a home, so I couldn’t be more pleased.

I got this text message from Melissa this morning:
“Five huge puddles of cat poop floating throwup. Mmmm. I think the dog ate cat poop and it made her throw up. I’m never having kids. Ewwwwww. Love you.”
Yes, Bruiser, the long time pet of my family has been reincarnated in the puppy that now lives at our house. Bruiser, like Dagny, was a fan of the Kitty Candies. Maybe it was the texture, maybe it was the flavor, we don’t really know, but we did find them all over the house and it wasn’t good. Luckily for Melissa and I, we have the ability to lock the dog out of the cat’s litter box, so that’s a good thing. Oh well, dogs will be dogs.

The first week of my new project has given me some great insight into what my next 2-3 months are going to be. I am currently sitting in the bottom level of an office building, sitting in a cube. What makes this different is that we have a large glass door that leads out onto a manicured patio space. Typically, at any given point in the day, you can find a collection of Indian programmers hanging out back there, smoking cigarettes and speaking Hindi to one another. It’s kind of strange. The other thing that sets apart our ground level office is that there are probably 30 cubes in the office and only the 5 or 6 that are being used by the team are actually occupied. There is no one else in the office space, which is kind of nice seeing as how the team can be as loud as we need to be and don’t really have to worry about client etiquette which is a nice change.
I have still not gotten a laptop and due to the increased security around here, I’m not allowed to hook my laptop up to the internet through their connection, thus I have been tethering my blackberry to the computer to allow me access to the outside world. Kind of sad, but at least it’s justification for being able to bill out my cell phone to the project. I did get an ID badge today, but that’s not much of a consolation, although I’m told that it’s taken up to three months, so I suppose that 2 days isn’t so bad. In my mind, I had a background check and a drug test prior to even starting the project, so it damn well better have been done.
I drove my car up to Charlotte yesterday and that went well, but it made me realize that I need to take care of a few little nagging issues with my car if I’m going to be driving up to Charlotte for the next few weeks/months.
#1 – I have to turn off the damn airbag light. It came on when I was messing with the ignition switch and hasn’t gone off since.
#2 – Cup holders…yes, they need to be fixed or replaced. It’s annoying that I can’t put a damn cup anywhere in my car without it falling.
#3 – Front tire replaced. I have known that it’s needing to be done, but it’s really time that I do it. I should get an alignment and a balance while I am at it as the car pulls of the left. Really quite annoying.
Other than those three things and perhaps the sunroof, I’ll suck it up and drive up to Charlotte on a weekly basis.
In two weeks, Melissa and I are going to be throwing a BBQ. I’m pretty excited as my brother will be down and it’ll be a good time. I enjoy having people over to the house and luckily, it’s gotten to the point where everyone doesn’t get shitfaced and trash the place…ahhhh….maturity. It’s such an amazing thing.
Anyway, I’m getting hungry, so I think that it may be time to venture out and find a snack.

This week, it being my last week on this project, is dragging on a little bit. Things have been really busy, but my responsibilities are winding down as of today. Last night we went out for BBQ and some beers and had a pretty good time. I was informed by my project management that I’ll be getting a good review on this project, so that should help with any plans of a promotion that I may want in the future.
Speaking of promotions….I was asked by my “People Manager” a few weeks ago if my goal was to be promoted to Manager in the November reviews. My reply to him was that I didn’t know if I was really ready for the responsibility of being a manager. After attending the “New Hire School” a few weeks ago, and seeing how much more adept I was at handling project management and keeping an eye on the scope of things, it really reinforced in my mind that I was on the right track. Am I going to be ready for a promotion? I don’t know. Would I like one? I’m still undecided. It would obviously be good for my career track, but at the same time, nothing hurts your career more than being put into a position where you have been set up to fail. We’ll see. I’m going to have to have a conversation with one of the VP’s and see what their take on it is and see what I can do to ensure that I’ll be promoted when I’m “ready”. I think that I may be hard pressed to attend all the required classes that I need to take in order to be eligible for promotion. I’ll have to look into that before I have any conversations with the VP.
This weekend, Melissa and I have nothing planned. It’s kind of nice actually. I think the biggest thing that I have to do around the house is to mow the lawn, which isn’t all that big a deal. We have three bags of yard refuse that we gathered up last weekend that also need to be taken care of. Last weekend, Melissa and I spent a few hours in the front of the house, pulling up weeds, cleaning out the front tree garden and just generally making the front of the house look like someone lives there. It was a pain, but I think that it looks much better. Unfortunately, as much work as we do out there, our house still looks a big ghetto because our neighbor doesn’t keep up with their yard, so it’s all overgrown and just miserable. Their back yard has foot tall grass and is generally a scary place, and of course, wouldn’t you know, they let their dog shit on our yard….not in their huge over grown backyard, but right on the strip of lawn next to our yard that I have to mow. I’ve boycotted mowing over there, and frankly I don’t really care, after all “it’s just a rental” and I sure as hell am not going to be stepping in chopped up dog shit to make their over grown yard look nice.

After quite a few weeks, I am going to moving off my current project and onto another one. It’s been fairly miserable working here in Houston for the past 8 weeks, it being summer time, humid as hell and generally a not very well run project, I’ll be glad to leave. I’ve been slotted for my next project which is working for a finance company up in Charlotte. Melissa and I are working on finding some long term hotels up there that are pet friendly.
Ideally, it would be pretty nice to have an “apartment” up in Charlotte where we could stay for a two week period, bring the dog and see the city and the surrounding cities. We’ll see if I can find a rate that’s low enough to make that a feasible goal, but either way, I’ll be driving my car up there pulling in some extra money, so that’ll be good.
Our puppy, Dagny has been absolutly wonderful. Last week when I get home from traveling, she greeted me so warmly, tail wagging, it was awesome. She is so well behaved…couldn’t have asked for a better dog.


She’s so damn cute.
Anyway, I just needed to burn some time before it was time to call it a day. I was up early to fly out here, so I’m exhausted.